Chapter 22
Aldrich Ames: the spy who hunted spies
‘You have to bring the cat back into the house!'. In intelligence jargon this enigmatic phrase means that when you have found a significant leak in the security system, the weak link has to be identified as soon as possible and the person responsible identified.
The cat in question in this chapter is Aldrich Ames. He was only revealed as a spy very late on and before his arrest in 1994 had plenty of time to cause serious damage. It could be said that he inflicted the most significant incursion into one of the world's biggest intelligence agencies; the CIA.
The case caused a scandal in the United States and even today has ruined many people's confidence in the CIA; a confidence that had already been shaken as a result of previous spectacular failures. In the case of Aldrich Ames, however, it reached its nadir: this was an agent who worked for the KGB, then for the SVR after it took over from the KGB following the collapse of the USSR, who at the same time was working as the head of counterintelligence within the CIA. In short, the man charged with uncovering moles, was actually a mole himself!
When Ames was unmasked, he confessed and was given a life sentence. Case closed? Not exactly. His file still contained secrets as the CIA did not want the public to know the full extent of the damage caused by this extraordinary spy. Was there something even more shameful hidden away? The case itself is complicated, full of twists and turns, double movements, manipulations and betrayals. It was a case worthy of the best spy novels and a real ‘Russian doll': the more you delve into the dark record, the more new and disturbing elements you find inside.
On 22 February 1994, the residents of a quiet street in Arlington, a residential city in Virginia, were awoken by unprecedented police activity: not just police, but federal agents. Under the lenses of the television cameras, the FBI searched a well-to-do house in Randolph Street and emerged with a couple in handcuffs: Aldrich Ames and his wife, Maria del Rosario. The neighbourhood was stunned. As far as the residents were concerned, Ames was a State Department official and a nobody, they did not know he was one of the most important men in the CIA, not to mention the head of counterintelligence and the man responsible for protecting the agency against any outside interference.
The first announcement from the FBI spokesperson revealed that this spy hunter was actually a spy himself and had been an agent for the Soviets and now the Russians. The ‘bastard', as he was labelled in the press, had been responsible for handing over US agents, who were later arrested and shot after being denounced to the enemy.
The revelation of the affair could not fail to cause alarm as it was rare to give so much publicity to the arrest of such a character: as far is possible, discretion is always the preferred method by the secret services. You keep your dirty laundry within the family before sending the person in question to prison, especially if the matter risked smearing the agencies' reputation.
The second astonishing moment came with the intervention of the FBI. The logical step would have been for the CIA agents to confront Ames first and conduct an internal investigation before possibly entrusting the mole to the federal police. There had always been a rivalry between the two services and this was a question of jurisdiction. In principle, the CIA only handles foreign affairs, with the FBI responsible for internal security. Yet this has not always been the case and the CIA often waded into cases that it had no initial involvement in, such as Watergate. Likewise, the FBI never gave up on the opportunity to encroach on the CIA's business.
Information on Ames' treachery soon began to filter trough from the FBI. He had become a Soviet agent in 1985. But how? Very simply, he was short of money and basically just knocked on the door of the USSR's embassy in Washington and offered his services in return for payment.
Ames was already working for the CIA at the time, but did not yet hold the prestigious position of head of counterintelligence. However, he was still a key CIA agent and it is hard to imagine that a US spy would present himself like that at the Soviet embassy: a diplomatic building that was under constant surveillance by the Americans. They knew who went in and who came out, so his actions certainly demonstrate a senseless lack of judgement. Not to mention the fact that there were other ways of contacting the enemy: there was always a Soviet diplomat or representative from an eastern country present at diplomatic receptions, inaugurations, film premieres etc. As at least half of these individuals were agents, it was easy to engage in the most mundane conversations without attracting attention.
What is also astonishing is the curious picture painted ofAldrich Ames by the American press, after using the information supplied by the CIA and FBI. He was described as a lazy man who thought only of money and drank like a fish. It was true that some spies were not always sober: the famous Cambridge Spies, for example, were known to drink more than their fair share! Ames was presented as a pathetic character and almost incompetent. Under such conditions, it was hard to see how he had achieved such a level of high office, which was incredibly sensitive in nature. Naturally, the institution's bureaucracy, the incompetence of some officials, or just an ‘I don't give a damn' attitude can also be called into question. However, this would not stick for long, after all, the CIA's head of counterintelligence was not just a minor figure!
[L’Evenement du Jeudi:
[From a Pentagon report in early 1996]
The life ofAldrich Ames, the son of an alcoholic CIA agent stationed in Rangoon (Burma), was nothing but one long blunder. After studying history and expressing a vague interest in comedy, his father forced him to enter the CIA as a junior employee. In his first post to Ankara in 1971, his boss described him as being ‘ lazy, scatter-brained and not fit for the life of an operative stationed abroad’, adding ‘he needs a quiet position, far from the front line of the Cold War.’ Ames was also an alcoholic and was often being picked up from out of the gutter. He sometime lost confidential documents and missed important secret meetings. In 1981 he was sent to Mexico: a nest of KGB spies. It was there he met and fell in love with Maria del Rosario, a 29-year-old, penniless, middle-class Columbian.
In 1983 he was appointed the CIA’s head of Soviet counterintelligence, which was an incredibly sensitive post and completely above his level. However, he did speak fluent Russian and after the endorsement of Professor Tournesol, his superiors were convinced that he was actually a hidden genius.
So who was Ames exactly? He was born in the early 1940s and his father, as well as being a teacher, also worked for the secret services. He wanted his son to join the CIA after completing his studies in 1963, although Ames had only managed two years in a history department where he had hardly shone. However, this perfectly average American was to become one of the greatest spies of the century.
Aldrich Ames initially held several junior positions, including an international one in Ankara. After a calamitous beginning, he quickly returned to Langley, near Washington, where the CIA's headquarters are located. His private life was not much better: he had made a good marriage to the heiress of a large East Coast family, but his life was very disorderly and he regularly went out drinking. It was so bad that one day his wife left him, even taking all the furniture from the house with her.
For safety reasons such events should have attracted the attention of his superiors, as an agent who led such a hectic life risked becoming a target for the enemy; and it is likely that the KGB had ad their eye on him for a while. However, the watershed for this future mole came in 1981, when Ames was appointed to Mexico and as usual, began to behave in a detestable manner. Not only did he continue to drink, but he chose for his companion in debauchery a Soviet diplomat who had been posted to Mexico, and who was the kind of man who naturally belonged in the KGB. Once again, his actions should have attracted the attentions of his superiors: his drunkenness was common knowledge and on several occasions, the Mexican police had to take him home.
However, Ames apparently started making amends when he met a charming u
niversity graduate from a good family from Bogota. She was attached to the Columbian embassy and her name was Maria del Rosario Dupuy. No doubt thanks to Ames, she was recruited by the CIA and ordered to infiltrate the group of Cuban students who resided in Mexico. Straight away one might have asked the question that if this young woman was already familiar with the world of intelligence, would she not already belong to some other agency?
Aldrich and Maria quickly became lovers and they later married after Aldrich had had divorced his wife. He returned to the USA in 1983 and suddenly the career of this humble agent took off into the stratosphere when he was offered one of the most sensitive and prestigious positions within the agency: head of CIA's counterintelligence.
In the intelligence service, the rule is to compartmentalise activities to prevent a mole from destroying an entire office. The only exception to this is the department in charge of counterintelligence. The head of such a department is practically the only person to know not only the identity of external sources, i.e. agents operating abroad, but also those operating on home soil. They are able to check every single file because part of their role is to root out moles wherever they may be.
Another responsibility of this very select group was to evaluate the importance of a defector and to determine whether or not they were genuine, or actually an enemy agent. Indeed, a false defector may engage in a form of systematic misinformation in order to try and convince his new employers that there were no moles within his department. They may even lead them down the wrong path so that honest and hardworking agents are dismissed, and the agency itself begins to self-destruct. Finally, counterintelligence must monitor those suspected of being double agents. They would first need to distil some genuine information in order to obtain the enemy's trust, before then progressing onto more damaging and toxic manoeuvres.
As it was the only department to have access to all records and sources, the infiltration of a mole in a counterintelligence department was therefore the ultimate goal for any enemy intelligence service.
Frederick Forsyth114
Each intelligence service has within it a team whose mission is to check the reliability of everyone else, which obviously makes it unpopular. This counterintelligence team has three functions: first, it assists and presides over the debriefing of all enemy defectors in order to determine whether they are genuine, or part of some kind of Machiavellian plan. Using the cover of providing some useful information, a false defector can, in fact, systematically spread more lies by persuading his new employers that there is no traitor amongst them, or guiding them to a multitude of false leads and dead-ends. In this case, an intelligently led ‘transplant’ can result in many sterile years full of vain, pointless efforts. Counterintelligence will then keep an eye on those in the enemy camp who, without letting slip that they’ve changed sides, will agree to ‘collaborate’, but are in fact still working as double agents. Sticking with his superior’s orders, the double agent would then provide his enemy with some genuinely reliable information in order to gain his trust, thus allowing him to sow the seeds of confusion. Finally, the counterintelligence department must constantly check to ensure that its own camp has not been infiltrated and that there are no traitors within its ranks.
Being the head of counterintelligence was therefore a key role, not to mention the overwhelming responsibilities involved. So why was such a job entrusted to an alcoholic with a disreputable past, whose performances up to that point had been merely average and who had only previously held junior positions? There are only two possible explanations: the first is that Aldrich Ames had powerful connections within the agency. However, if this were true then why was he only receiving such a job offer now, when his career had otherwise taken a relatively mundane path? Perhaps there was someone at the top of the hierarchy who felt the sudden need to put Ames in this position? An interested party who were perhaps seeking to hide their own wicked behaviour? The second option does not necessarily contradict the first in suggesting that if Ames was appointed to such an important position, it was because after so many years of mediocrity, he had suddenly demonstrated his skills to his superiors by providing them with firsthand information on eastern countries. The result? He unexpectedly rose in their estimations and so when the time came to appoint a new department chief, his name was among those on the list of possible candidates. The question remains though: how did he get this firsthand information and did he only secure it in order to move his way up the career ladder?
If the second example is correct, then the KGB could well have been the one to provide the information. After all, if you want to get the big fish, then you have to have to send out the smaller fish as bait first in order to catch them! This second explanation also negates the incredible story that suggests Aldrich Ames knocked on the door of the Soviet embassy in Washington in 1985, as he actually became the head of counterintelligence two years earlier, in 1983 and in all likelihood, he was already a spy when it happened.
For now, let us stick with the official version; the one given to the public after Ames' arrest. In 1985,Ames, now the head of CIA's counterintelligence, was in financial difficulty. He was recently divorced and had to pay alimony to his ex-wife, while Maria del Rosario on the other hand, who had now ceased working for the CIA, hated living frugally. Ames had to somehow think of a way to get more money, even later saying after his conviction that he had thought about robbing a bank.
And so one day in April 1985, he simply walked up to the Soviet embassy and asked to speak with the head of the KGB's branch in Washington. The resident, as they are known, was obviously an agent with diplomatic cover and when introduced, Ames explained that he was willing to betray his country for money, lots of money. As a pledge, he offered the KGB agent the names of three Soviet double agents who had passed on information to the CIA. The Russian understood the value of the information and in return, immediately gave Ames a few thousand dollars and the two men agreed to quickly establish further contact, with the promise that Ames would be paid handsomely for any further information provided.
Ames quietly exited the embassy, regardless of the presence of the FBI cameras and several further appointments followed, which took place at a fashionable restaurant in Washington. Prudently, the KGB chief sent a junior agent, even though, according to the official version given after Ames' arrest, the American never showed any particular discretion at the meetings: whenever Ames was due to meet with his case officer, he would just shove all the original documents that he wanted to hand over in a plastic bag, without even taking the precaution of making photocopies, before quietly leaving the office, jumping in his car, and leaving Langley with all the classified documents on the seat next to him. Upon delivering the information to the agent in the restaurant, he would be given his reward. And what a reward it was, amounting to several million dollars in all. When considering the parsimonious nature of the Soviets, this was a considerable amount that surely must have justified the importance of the information handed over.
Some of his colleagues in the CIA began to ask questions, but Ames always had the answers: his wife had inherited a legacy and he had made several very successful investments with the money. The tax office was naturally hardly satisfied with such explanations, but Ames somehow managed to slip through the net and until his arrest, had no concerns at all about what he was doing.
Even more surprising was the attitude of the Soviets, who knew full-well that their mole might attract suspicion if he continued to randomly spend the money they were paying him. Yet his expensive lifestyle did not seem to worry them, nor did the manifest lack of judgement he continued to display. A clear example of this behaviour was uncovered after his arrest, when secret Pentagon papers containing the personal list of CIA agents was found in a box in his wardrobe. Worse still, the FBI agents also found a wealth of information stored on the hard drive of his computer. It was clear that the curious spy had kept hold of everything, evidently believing that he was untouchable!
As the head of counterintelligence, Ames had access to the files of American agents who working in the USSR and other eastern countries. In other words, Soviet citizens who were working for the CIA. The American agency was certainly well endowed with a significant number of double agents: much more so than the KGB had in the US or other western countries. The time of disinterested spies who were working out of sympathy for the communist regime had long gone and the USSR of Brezhnev, Andropov or Chernenko was struggling to generate any enthusiasm for the cause. Forget about the idea of working for the honour of your country: agents now wanted to be paid and recruiting suitable candidates had become much more difficult and uncertain.
Great Spies of the 20th Century Page 27